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Radeon R9 390X 8GB or GeForce GTX 970 4GB


another note, since you are getting skylake CPU it's 1151 socket, the mobo you picked is 1150, 1151 supports DDR4 ram, so swap the ram also to DDR4.
if you are going to buy a monitor too, try and get a freesync one with range of 45hz(or lower) to 144hz, adds a lot to gaming comfort
 
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I love my 390x. It is blow for blow with the GTX980.
I see that the 390 is better "price to fps" but I had a set budget as a gift to me, and the 390x fit. so was worth it for me. I've found it a stonker of a card. Needs MSI afterburner with fans on auto to run cool enough for me but thats super easy and free to do. Never goes above 70° with MSI afterburner. I got the Asus Strix
 
Well I am just going to have to disagree here.

4 cores at this point is not going to be future proof. You'll hopefully be fine playing games released in the next 6 months but after that ..
 
Yeah I was surprised the price of the 390, I was expecting at least £330.

And yeah I was thinking about the future with regard to my CPU but I guess I could always upgrade to an i7 at some point when the i5 begins to struggle. The i5 fits well in my budget and will allow me to play all games that I got on Steam currently at max settings and smooth fps hopefully, as currently my PC is 7 years old and slowly deteriorating underneath my desk.

And crap yeah Ive just noticed the sockets with the CPU that they aint compatible with the Motherboard!!

I could either go with

Originally Posted by UTmaniac View Post
That Skylake cpu is not compatible with that Z97 motherboard, you need a socket 1151, some of which can be had for a better bundle price with the 6600k eg. https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigab...bu-021-gi.html

The bundle provided by UTmaniac

ORRRRRR


Any views on getting on the i7 instead of the i5? I know it cost's £70 more but would allow me to keep the selected motherboard that I like. Or would it just be better to stick with the i5 and go with the bundle?!?
 
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Well I am just going to have to disagree here.

4 cores at this point is not going to be future proof. You'll hopefully be fine playing games released in the next 6 months but after that ..
The issue with the FX8 CPU is that they have much lower IPC than Intel's CPU, and they need all 8 cores fully utilised in order to be on par with 4 cores i5; on any games they doesn't fully utilise all 8 cores, they fall behind Intel i5. So basically on any games that use 4 cores/threads or less, the FX8 would only be having 50% of less of it's full performance :o
 
Well I am just going to have to disagree here.

4 cores at this point is not going to be future proof. You'll hopefully be fine playing games released in the next 6 months but after that ..

youll be fine.

i dont get why people cant understand you think the companies dont know whats in store ?

a modern quad will be good for 3-5 years yet in games.

anything above in enthusiast .

games companies need to sell the new games to people so it has to be able to play on the majority for money to be made.

so a i5 is fine.for many years yet.enjoy.
 
The issue with the FX8 CPU is that they have much lower IPC than Intel's CPU, and they need all 8 cores fully utilised in order to be on par with 4 cores i5; on any games they doesn't fully utilise all 8 cores, they fall behind Intel i5. So basically on any games that use 4 cores/threads or less, the FX8 would only be having 50% of less of it's full performance :o

I'm not going to argue against the IPC difference. But the thing is, its very rare on modern games for a single cores performance to be the limiting factor at 1080p.

Thats only going to become less of an issue with DX12 coming in (very slowly admittedly).

I'm not saying he should go AMD btw, just that I would go for an older i7.
 
Well I am just going to have to disagree here.

4 cores at this point is not going to be future proof. You'll hopefully be fine playing games released in the next 6 months but after that ..

What??? (Beep) Wrong!

Dg said it right.

a modern quad will be good for 3-5 years yet in games.

anything above in enthusiast .

games companies need to sell the new games to people so it has to be able to play on the majority for money to be made.

so a i5 is fine.for many years yet.enjoy.

This^
 
I got my I7 920 just after it released and it still compares well with todays I5's in benchmarks and games that are well threaded. The same can not be said for the i5 of the 920's generation. For future proofing an I7 is a good idea imo.
 
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Yeah I was surprised the price of the 390, I was expecting at least £330.

And yeah I was thinking about the future with regard to my CPU but I guess I could always upgrade to an i7 at some point when the i5 begins to struggle. The i5 fits well in my budget and will allow me to play all games that I got on Steam currently at max settings and smooth fps hopefully, as currently my PC is 7 years old and slowly deteriorating underneath my desk.

And crap yeah Ive just noticed the sockets with the CPU that they aint compatible with the Motherboard!!

I could either go with



The bundle provided by UTmaniac

ORRRRRR


Any views on getting on the i7 instead of the i5? I know it cost's £70 more but would allow me to keep the selected motherboard that I like. Or would it just be better to stick with the i5 and go with the bundle?!?



thats haswell, not skylake, ok here are thing i think you should swap, wont change much in gaming, unless you do video editing and streaming, and heavy on OC, but since your last pc is 7 years old, so...i will go with no :p

the mobo MSI Z170A Gaming Pro 120£
the CPU Intel Core i5-6400 156£ ( doubt you would need more, and even if you do, you can always sell it and get higher one, but there is no need to throw 100£ more on a cpu if you wont use the extra features anyway, it's like buying 64Go of ram when you never go over 16Go, just money wasted on 48Go)
the PSU Superflower 850w Gold+ 115£ (good to have 850, new gpus coming this year, a lot of ppl will upgrade, you can grab extra a 390 to crossfire for cheap if you want to, that why it's important to also have a Motherboard capable of crossfire 2way)
The Ram Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 for 100£ ( but am not sure which one is better, so if anyone have better info than me on the ram he can advise you on it ).
 
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4 cores not enough lol, 4 physical cores is going to be enough for a good 3+ years. Games are more and more GPU hungry these days. Chances of any game Dev making a game that only plays on 20% of the markets PC's???? im gunna go with 0%

Certain games do benefit from an i7 over an i5 but not as much as say a 970 to a 980ti for example.

AMD are just out of the question with CPU's and until i actually see something that can rival a 4690k then i will never believe that their "new" cpus are around the corner. They are just so far behind its a bit of a joke. Personally i would love them to even just catch up so intel dont have a licence to print money. I just dont see it happening.
 
So many variations and options!!! XD Ok so let me put together what I think will work and what everyone has told me is good to do, and the reason why I'm selecting each item.







Strange that my entire build has changed in the last 2 days aha and I'm sure it may change again before I buy it next month! Appreciate the help people! Now does this look better? worse? the same? aha
 
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